20 Christmas Photo Booth Ideas

Christmas is the most photographed day of the year and produces some of the worst photographs of the year. That's no coincidence. It's a lighting problem. Family who live far away can join in through an online photo booth.

It all happens indoors, after dark, under ceiling lights, fairy lights, candles and a TV. Each has a different colour temperature, and cameras can't balance them. You get orange faces, blown-out highlights and a tree that turns into a green smear.

Fix the light and everything else follows. Here are 20 ideas plus the specific lighting adjustments that make December photographs work.

Solve the lighting first

This section will improve your Christmas photographs more than the twenty ideas below it, so it goes first.

• Turn off the ceiling light. Overhead lighting produces shadows under the eyes and nose and is the main reason indoor party photographs look grim. One lamp at face height instead.
• Don't sit with the tree behind you. A lit tree behind you points bright light at the camera. The camera exposes for the tree and leaves you dark, so put the tree to one side. Then take your strips in our free online photo booth. For family abroad, our online photobooth for long-distance couples and friends puts both homes on one strip.
• Shoot near a window during the day. December daylight is short but very soft. The two hours around noon on Christmas Day are the best light you will get, and almost nobody uses them.
• Pick one type of light and turn the others off. Mixed sources cause the orange-and-green cast. All warm or all neutral both work, but the mixture doesn't.
• Consider black and white. Monochrome removes the colour-temperature problem entirely. It is a legitimate answer to a genuinely difficult lighting situation, and Christmas suits it.

Seven ideas for Christmas Day

1The jumper reveal

Frames one and two normal, frames three and four with the Christmas jumper on. The reveal is the joke and it works on everyone, including the people who claim to hate it.

2Opening one present

Shoot four frames of one present being opened: anticipation, tearing, seeing it, reacting. The reaction frame is real, which is rare in Christmas photos.

3The full table, before

Taken before anyone sits down, while the table is still perfect and nobody has spilled anything. Ten minutes later this scene does not exist.

4The full table, after

The same frame, taken at the end. Wreckage, crackers, somebody asleep. Printed as a pair with the previous one, it is the whole day.

5The paper crown, obviously

Everyone in cracker hats, four frames, increasingly deranged. The most reliable Christmas strip there is.

6Three generations

Take it early, in daylight, before the afternoon disappears and people start leaving. Christmas is one of the few days this group assembles at all.

7Someone asleep in the background

Four frames of everyone posing while one person is unconscious in an armchair behind. An annual tradition in most families whether or not it is documented.

Six ideas for the run-up

8Decorating the tree

Four frames of the process rather than the finished result. The finished tree is photographed every year; the arguing about where the lights go is not.

9The bad gingerbread house

Frames one through three: construction. Frame four: collapse. It always collapses.

10Wrapping presents badly

Do it late at night, surrounded by paper, holding something that's clearly a book but won't look like one.

11The Christmas market

Outdoors, at dusk, with market lights behind you. The one December setting where the background lighting works in your favour.

12The office party

One strip with the colleagues you actually like. In three years you will have moved jobs and this will be the only photograph of them you own.

13The first frost

Outdoors, cold, visible breath. Winter light is the softest of the year and it makes almost everyone look good.

Seven ideas for a Christmas spent apart

This is the hardest occasion to be away for, and the one where a shared photograph does the most work.

14The shared strip

One booth link, two households, one strip with both of you on it. Taken while the meal is happening in one place and not yet in the other.

15Same jumper, different countries

Matching jumpers, separate strips, placed side by side. Absurd and effective.

16The tree exchange

Both take a strip in front of your own tree. Send them to each other. A small direct look into someone else's Christmas.

17Opening their present, filmed in four frames

Take a strip while opening the gift they sent, and send it back within the hour. The nearest thing to watching someone open a present.

18Midnight, wherever you are

Everyone takes a strip at their own midnight. Compiled, it is a Christmas that spans a whole day of time zones.

19The empty chair, acknowledged

A strip with the family and a visible gap where somebody should be. Difficult, honest, and the sort of photograph people are glad exists later.

20The call, captured

Take a strip during the video call, so the call leaves something behind. Calls usually leave nothing, which is the whole reason behind the duo booth.

Making it an annual thing

Christmas has the same advantage as a birthday. It comes on a fixed date with roughly the same people every year, without any organising.

• Same pose, same room, every year. Ideally the same spot in the house. Over a decade the room changes, the people change, and the sequence shows both.
• Everyone who came. One strip per year with whoever was present. This becomes a quiet record of a family over time, including the changes nobody plans for.
• The jumper archive. One strip a year in that year's jumper. Frivolous and unexpectedly good after five or six years.
• Before and after the meal. Two strips, same framing, several hours apart. Repeat annually.

The case for this kind of repetition is made properly in how to start a photo strip tradition.

Practical notes

• Take the group photograph early. Mid-afternoon at the latest. By evening people have left, fallen asleep or changed out of anything photographable.
• Set the booth up before people arrive. Something that appears mid-afternoon gets used far less than something that was already there.
• Involve the person who hates photographs by giving them a job, like holding a prop or throwing something. A task is easier to accept than a request to pose.
• Print a few before people leave. Handing a relative a physical photo strip on the way out is a very small thing that people remember.
• Do not photograph everything. Two or three strips across the day. A person documenting continuously is not present, and being present is the point.

Photographing a family that does not want to be photographed

Christmas is the one day the family's camera-shy members are stuck in a room with everyone else. Every family has at least two. Pushing harder doesn't work, but a few indirect approaches do.

Give them a job instead of a pose. Ask them to hold something, throw something, or press the button. People who dislike being photographed usually dislike being looked at, and a task removes that. The photograph still happens; it just is not about them standing still.

Photograph the activity, not the group. Four frames of someone carving, pouring or wrestling with wrapping paper make a portrait nobody has to sit for.

Take it early, before the day is exhausting. Resistance rises steeply through the afternoon. A strip at eleven in the morning gets a yes far more often than the same request at six.

Let them see it. A great deal of photograph-avoidance is about not knowing what the result looks like. Showing someone the strip immediately, and offering to delete it, converts a surprising number of refusals.

Accept one frame. A strip where someone shows up in one frame and hides in three beats no photo at all. It's usually the frame the family finds funniest years later.

The one worth taking

Of everything here, the pair that matters is the table before and after. It captures the real shape of the day: huge preparation, a few hours of chaos, and a room that looks completely different at the end.

It also requires no cooperation from anyone, which at Christmas is a significant practical advantage.

Turn off the ceiling light, put a lamp at face height, and take a couple of strips across the day. The free online photo booth runs in a browser on whatever device is nearest.

Frequently Asked Questions